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Teachable Moments

My Dad’s Love

I’m in love with my husband. I’m in love with my children. I’m in love with so many people. Who taught me how to love? My father did. My father is still alive today. He is fairly young still. He is a good man. He is honorable. He taught me to stand tall. He taught me to be strong. He taught me to forgive. He taught me to be the daughter and woman that he knew I could be. I don’t ever want to fall short. I don’t ever want to disappoint him. I may be a wife and mother now, but I always want to believe that I bring honor to my father. I want to believe that my father is proud of me. My father sees my flaws and my mistakes and loves me anyway. I love my father. I adore my father and I look up to my father. My father is not perfect. I don’t always understand why he does some of the things he does. I don’t always understand certain choices he makes, but it doesn’t make me love him any less. I love because he loves me.

How much greater is the Father’s love? God uses our earthly fathers to teach us love. They teach us a multitude of things, but they teach us to love first. When I see a picture of a father holding his newborn baby, it really touches something inside of me. Of course a mother and her newborn baby is beautiful, but a mother has had 9 months to bond with, and love that life inside of her. A father only gets to experience that first cry before he begins the lifelong bond. That doesn’t mean the father loves any less or more, or even different than the mother. It only means that first moment of wiggles and hiccups that a mother got to experience in her womb, is now what the father is experiencing for the first time. God uses our fathers to teach us how He loves us. Many earthly fathers fail at that, but God never fails. His love never fails. He knew us even before we were a thought in our parents’ hearts; and He loved us.

Mothers, don’t be so critical of the father of your children. Don’t roll your eyes when they put the diaper on backwards, or wrestle too hard with them, or have a hard time getting up in the middle of the night. Dads aren’t made like moms, but it doesn’t mean that boys and girls need their fathers any less. Too many kids are growing up without fathers in this generation. Yeah, some are just plain jerks and terrible guys, but some have been pushed away by the mothers of those kids. Be strong. Stand up and fight for your children.Show them what love is.

So thank you Dad. Thank you for never giving up on me and always loving me. Thank you for making hard choices, sacrificial choices in order to not leave me. I see you Dad. I see the Heavenly Father in you. I see you in the choice I made for my husband. He is a great father too. Because of you, Dad, I have seen, tasted, experienced, touched, felt, and found LOVE. Thank you, and I love you too!